bronze statues

As I walk through Chinatown on my way to and from work each day, I pass many shops specializing, whether they acknowledge it or not, in what can only be described as "odd curiosities". Now most of these curiosities are cheap little knickknacks, aimed at tourists. You've got your rice hats, your plastic swords and your snap pops.

And then there are the life-sized bronze statues. 

There's the classic life-sized bronze lion. 

This one I guess I could understand as a gift for the curator of the Art Institute in Chicago. Or if you're buddies with the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

Then there's the life-sized bronze bench, complete with bronze kids.

Uh... What's going on here? I ordered a bench. You know, for sitting. Why would you permanently affix bronzed children onto the center of the bench, the part most likely to support my ass? This is kinda creepy. You didn't just Han Solo some innocent children at rest, did you? If so, selling this bench is an extremely risky way to cover up your heinous crime.

And just the other day, I passed this statue.

You gotta be shittin' me. That's what I said to myself as I fumbled in my pocket for my iPhone to a) snap this picture and b) call my priest to tell him hell had bronzed over. Whichever metallurgy whiz came up with this one was tragically unfamiliar with the buying habits of American sports fans. 

The thing is, these things cannot be cheap. Yet, judging by the frequency with which they're unloaded from delivery trucks each week, they're selling like hotcakes. Monstrous, metallic, eyesores of hotcakes.

But I guess that's the good news. If people are using their disposable (quite disposable in this case) income on these abominations (abronzinations?), we've gotta be pulling out of this whole recession/depression thing. 

Thank God for that.